Julia De Ville

Julia deVille is inspired by the Memento Mori jewellery of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and Victorian Mourning jewellery. She is fascinated by the acceptance of death in these periods.\rJulia works predominately in traditional gold smithing, combined with materials that were once living such as jet, a petrified wood historically used in Victorian Mourning jewellery, human hair and taxidermy. These materials are used as a Memento Mori, or reminder of our mortality.\rJulia incorporates the symbols of death through out her work because she thinks it is important to identify with the concept that, we are in fact mortal creatures. “The nature of our culture is to obsess over planning the future, however in doing so, we forget to enjoy the present”.\r“I consider my taxidermy to be a celebration of life, a preservation of something beautiful. I feel strongly about the fair and just treatment of animals and to accentuate this point I use only animals that have died of natural causes”.